How to make svnant/svnkit prompt for a username/password

antsvnsvnantsvnkit

I have an Ant script that needs to checkout a directory from Subversion. This works using svnant/svnkit. However, Subversion access is authenticated, and I do not want to store my user password in a file.

Can I make svnkit pop up a password dialog?
Or even better, make it use the same credential caching that subversive/svnkit inside of Eclipse uses (the username can be read from the build.properties)?

I cannot switch to public key based authentication, as I do not control the subversion server.

Right now, it just says "svn: authentication cancelled".

Best Answer

An analog to this answer:

<input message="password:>" addproperty="password">
      <handler classname="org.apache.tools.ant.input.SecureInputHandler" />
</input>

This will make it so that the person's username is not displayed. This requires Ant 1.7.1 or greater.

Related Solutions

Use svnant without a username or password

The simple, reliable solution is to store your desired svn username and password in a build.properties file in your home directory, set permissions so no other users can read it, and load that in your ant script.

I've relied on auth caching in build scripts and it's annoying because sooner or later the authentication won't be cached, or the wrong authentication will be cached, and you will waste time while you try to realize what's wrong. Or you might decide to run ant in a different environment, like a build server, that makes it difficult to feed svn's authentication cache. It's better to load your authentication information from a file and program ant to give a clear message when that file is missing.

You could also try using the svnkit command line client to cache your authentication and see whether that still works when used via ant.

This thread talks about the same issues: http://www.nabble.com/svnant-and-authentication-td17865407.html

How to checkout from SVN with an ANT task

If you don't get SvnAnt working, you can always use exec:

<exec executable="/usr/local/bin/svn">
    <arg value="co" />
    <arg value="svn://repository/url" />
    <arg value="/destination/directory" />
</exec>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Use svnant without a username or password

How to checkout from SVN with an ANT task

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